Does Obama have contempt for the left?

[ProSense]

Does Obama have contempt for the left?

By Adam Serwer

Yesterday, President Obama gave a combative response to criticism he's been receiving from the left for his proposed deal with Republicans to extend both the middle and upper income tax cuts. Sounding a note that resembled his rebuke to neoconservatives regarding the "satisfying purity of indignation" in his Nobel acceptance speech, the president said:

Now, if that's the standard by which we are measuring success or core principles, then let's face it, we will never get anything done. People will have the satisfaction of having a purist position and no victories for the American people. And we will be able to feel good about ourselves and sanctimonious about how pure our intentions are and how tough we are, and in the meantime, the American people are still seeing themselves not able to get health insurance because of preexisting conditions or not being able to pay their bills because their unemployment insurance ran out.

While there are a lot of easy rejoinders to the notion that, as the president said, America was "founded on compromise" it happens to be true. Not compromise with the British, but compromise between the states. When the president was referring to the three-fifths compromise that allowed slavery to continue in the ostensible land of the free, or the fact that original passage of Social Security essentially excluded large numbers of people (particularly, I might add, black people) he was referencing the reality that the story of progress, particularly liberal progress, has ever been one of noxious, painful compromise. That's a rhetorical flourish that doesn't reflect one way or another on the merits of this particular compromise, but it's accurate.

Jonathan Chait points out that Obama explicitly rejected the Republican logic behind the upper income tax cuts, stating "I'm as opposed to the high-end tax cuts today as I've been for years...(T)he American people, for the most part, think it's a bad idea to provide tax cuts to the wealthy," while conceding that the deal was necessary:

I've said before that I felt that the middle-class tax cuts were being held hostage to the high-end tax cuts. I think it's tempting not to negotiate with hostage-takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. Then people will question the wisdom of that strategy. In this case, the hostage was the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed.

Republicans briefly stopped calling the president a Kenyan Muslim Socialist to denounce him for comparing them to hostage takers. But insincere Republican pearl-clutching aside, this really is a partisan statement. He's basically saying he thinks liberals are reasonable but wrong about the deal, while Republicans are almost impossible to deal with. Who is he really showing contempt for here?

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[Supersedeas]

1. a history of compromise that successfully prolonged an injustice

[zipplewrath]

4. Ultimately for the better part of 200 years

More than one historian has made the case over the years that the 3/5ths compromise was a horribly bad one. Historical revisionism is a tough game, but it is hard to see how any other result would have been worse. Two divided countries, 13 multiple states, or an agreement on how the future would proceed prior to the formation were all possibilities. The Civil war was about as bad as anything that could have come about. Not to mention another 100 years of Jim Crow. And considering the path almost every other country took, it is arguable that, left to their own devices, a southern US country may have had to abandon slavery on roughly a similar time table, and without the subsequent Jim Crow period.

It was a bad compromise, and much like DADT, it was one that didn't turn out like many intended. The thought was that the south would be incentivized to end slavery because then their population would become a full person, instead of 3/5ths. Instead, it became an incentive (amongst many) to import or create (and retain) as many as they could. They should have negotiated that only voters counted. That ultimately would have been beneficial to not only slaves in the long term, but women and Native Americans and really all imigrants. Look today at the political incentive within the democratic party to work for greater immigrant rights.

[ladjf]

6. The pivotal event in American History was the Revolutionary War.

That didn't seem like a compromise to me. Of the Colonies had lost, every sig-nee of the Declaration of Independence would have been hung.

[randr]

2. A poke in the eye to the left

A sissy slap to the right.
I can't stop thinking of how we had the republicants by the balls before the past election and the opportunity missed by congress to draw a line.
Totally inept political gamesmanship.

[jaxx]

3. I think the President was completely honest in his statement.

Those who throw the word bombs got taken to task. It's about time. I didn't see contempt, although plenty of it is slammed on him, I saw rebuttal.

[Hello_Kitty]

5. The public option remark was a cheap shot. eom

[dave29]

9. and calling him ignorant, weak, asshole, I could go on

isn't a cheap shot (from an anonymous message board to boot)?

Look around you at what is going on here. The President is pilloried daily here, and called much much worse than any awful thing he said to those who could not handle getting the public option.

It was not a "cheap shot" it was an honest rebuke.

I say this as someone who desperately wanted the PO, but was willing to insure 30 million and ban the pre-existing condition bullshit as positive steps.

[Hello_Kitty]

10. I haven't called him anything like that.

And anonymous people on the internet are not the POTUS and the head of the Democratic Party.

[CakeGrrl]

7. More reality-based perspective, therefore it will fail here. n/t

[TheWraith]

11. +100. nt

[cottonseed]

8. Everything Obama does is about the Left. Really.

Sticking it to the left is the basis for all his decisions. I know it to be true.

[polichick]

12. He has shown disdain for the battles of the left since the campaign...

Even though his own candidacy - and subsequent election - could not have happened without those battles.

From HuffPo, 2007:

"Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama attacked his chief rival as out of step with the times and too locked in 1960s social and cultural battles to deal with new challenges that require a different and perhaps younger perspective.

'I think there is no doubt that we represent the kind of change that Senator Clinton can't deliver on, and part of it is generational,' Mr. Obama told Fox News yesterday about the difference between himself and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. 'I mean, Senator Clinton and others, they've been fighting some of the same fights since the '60s, and it makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done.'"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/08/obama-hits-generational-d_n_71729.html

[BluegrassDem]

13. Obama likes progressive ideas, NOT progressive tactics

He is progressive pragmatist. He's not an idealogue. He's not a bomb thrower either. He's all about governing. He's been dealt the worst economy since the Great Depression. He wants to get people back to work and put money in their pocket.